That One's Going To Leave A Mark
by fascinationex
Summary: Tesla invites Nnoitra on a date, and Nnoitra is not well-equipped for dating. [A zombie apocalypse-themed romcom. For Nnoites week 2018 Day 7: "Horror AU"]


Nnoitra is bored out of his skull.

Nothing interesting ever happens on his watch shifts.

Everybody hates watch shifts, which is why they schedule them in cycles. Nnoitra gets four hours every morning for two weeks in a row, and then he can forget about it for another two months. It's the only task on the roster that doesn't get reassigned - it's so shit that everybody gets a turn, unless they can convince another person to swap.

Someone has to be on watch twenty four hours a day, even if nothing happens.

It means that he's perched in the rickety lookout above the gate with his long limbs threaded through the railing around its tiny square platform. He's been there for three hours and twelve minutes and he does not have to glance at the face of the clock to know.

The 'lookout' is twelve metres in the air. It shakes and sways with vibrations from the ground, all of which grow stronger the further up they travel, and with the wind. It makes everyone nauseated. If it breaks or Nnoitra falls, the drop will probably kill him.

He kicks his boots in the air, peering at the distant ground beneath their heels, and imagines the fall just to pass the time.

The railing is meant to prevent falling for exactly this reason. Mostly it was put up there because the dumb girl Ulquiorra brought with him can trip over her own feet even when she's on solid ground, and she's too stupid to use that as an excuse to skip watch.

The roof of the big, repurposed country house they're all living in seems patchwork from up here - the sprawling place has seen a bunch of slapdash additions since they ousted its previous residents and set up shop, and the roofing is of wildly differnt materials and qualities. Past the house and the heavily trodden paths and the surrounding vegetable patches with their big, defaced 'KEEP OFF' signs is the greenhouse, set just far enough inside the fence that it catches most of the sunlight.

Outside the gate and its fence is a wide circle of absolutely barren earth. Nothing grows. The earth is flattened. The sight lines are absolutely clear. Nothing can approach without the watch's notice, and sufficient work is put in every week to make sure it remains that way

There was a breach in the fence three hours ago, which should have been interesting. But instead of being caused by hungry monsters from beyond the perimeter - Nnoitra is _never_ that fucking lucky during his watch shifts - it was caused by Yylfordt tossing Di Roy right through the fence. The fence is a lot weaker when you break it from the fucking _inside_ , which those morons once again figured out the hard way.

Nnoitra got to watch Grimmjow kick the shit out of both of them at least. Nnoitra thinks he's more angry because nobody likes being woken at five fifteen by two assholes having a domestic than he is about the fence.

He's not that surprised to see it's Tesla who comes out to fix it, stretching and yawning in the dawn light as it creeps over the gleaming edge of Zommari's greenhouse. By rights it should be Di Roy and Yylfordt fixing it. As a group they operate on a steady 'you break it, you fix it,' principle. But the fence needs fixing immediately and neither of those losers is in good enough shape to do it.

He hasn't spoken to Tesla that often, but he's always polite and friendly to Nnoitra, which is... weird. Nnoitra doesn't engender friendly feelings, or even polite feelings. So Tesla seems like a nice guy, but Nnoitra has also never seen anybody giving him shit, which does not marry well with his understanding of how the people around here work.

A body doesn't survive living here by being _friendly_ \- except maybe Ulquiorra's dumb girl, but he guesses you can afford to be all kinds of stupid if you've got Ulquiorra and his dead-eyed stare backing you up.

Tesla is, apparently, the kind of guy who volunteers for necessary jobs like this. Maybe he's gonna make Yylfordt take his watch next week. Nnoitra would.

Watching Tesla wrestle with the fence is way more fun. Usually by this point in his watch shift, Nnoitra is just staring out at nothing while the rocking of the lookout slowly makes him seasick.

He is still, to be fair, getting kind of seasick. Watching Tesla fuck around with the fence can't stop that.

Tesla boards it up with a kind of bewilderment that gives way to determination. Four times Nnoitra sees his fluffy pale head lift from the job, and then he steps back and squints - well, okay, Nnoitra can't actually see him squinting with his eyes from this distance, but his body language is a full body kind of squint.

It's not a good repair job. It looks like it'll hold, to Nnoitra's eye, but it also looks like it's been done by a three year old with no spatial reasoning skills. Tesla must think it'll hold, too, because he climbs right up it, quick and nimble, and jumps the fence to fix the battered sheet metal on the outside.

That's a faster fix, at least - it's just big sheets, roughly the right size and shape, bolted together to protect the wooden fence beneath from wandering claws.

Keeping an eye on Tesla kills another half hour and Nnoitra is so grateful for the distraction that he doesn't even kick up a fuss about having to pull up the gate to let Tesla back inside.

Tesla, whether out of reciprocal gratefulness or because he actually wants to talk to Nnoitra for some reason, pauses right beneath the lookout. He looks up, and his voice is just loud enough to carry up to Nnoitra where he sits in a tangle of spindly limbs and wooden rails.

"I think Szayelaporro is going to call for a supply run. If not today, then soon," he says. "He's running low on..." a pause. "Something."

He looks at the ladder, up at Nnoitra, back to the ladder - and then a moment later he's halfway up, just as quickly and deftly as he made it over the fence. Now he's close enough for Nnoitra to make out the bronzey-gold of his eyelashes and the tiny scattered freckles across his nose. If, you know, Nnoitra wants to do that.

"Huh," says Nnoitra.

Szayel, technically, isn't in charge. That'd be Barragan and Harribel - which, yeah, an old fuck and a woman, gag him, but they're both scary as shit in their own ways - and Ulquiorra, who is... there as well. Others, like Szayel and Zommari, rule over particular resources with absolute authority.

It's been a while since anybody was dumb enough to fuck with Zommari's glasshouse, because even dipshits like Yammy understand they need food to eat.

Nnoitra isn't sure how many people might fuck with whatever Szayel's cooking up. But they all remember Verona from before. When he used to be a mechanical engineer.

That's a way scarier fate than the monsters outside could ever be.

Technically Szayel isn't in charge, but if he throws a big enough tantrum - and he will, because that's one area in which Szayel really does excel, more than in any kind of research - there'll be a supply run.

"So what?" He peers down at Tesla. His hair's sweaty from his ugly fence repairs. And his face is flushed pink across the cheeks, which makes Nnoitra think all sorts of things. "Gonna volunteer?"

That can't be right. That'd be a weird thing to tell Nnoitra about. Why does Nnoitra care if Tesla volunteers?

"I might," Tesla says, which, whoops, apparently that _is_ right, this is what Tesla is trying to tell him.

Nnoitra is bored enough not to be annoyed, but he also isn't sure why they're having this conversation.

Then Tesla adds, "If you're thinking about volunteering as well, I would like to go with you."

Nnoitra blinks. "What," he says blankly. " _Why_?"

"Because," Tesla tells him, steadily and placidly, like this isn't the most baffling and terrifying conversation he's had all month, "I want to spend time with you."

He's being asked out. On a date. Or what passes for a date these days. Which means, ultimately, that Tesla probably wants to fuck him. He looks down at him more critically.

He likes it like this, with Tesla looking up at him from way down there and beseeching something he has in his power to give. He tilts his head.

"You're pretty direct, aren't you?"

"Yes," Tesla agrees, still looking up at him, unflinching, "I am."

Well. That's easy, at least.

Nnoitra considers. "I could stretch my legs."

And... Tesla's cute and all, but it's better to spend some time alone with someone before you hook up with them, right? That's how people are meant to do it, he's pretty sure. Nnoitra doesn't really know for sure, but that seems reasonable. Probably.

The alarm clock gives a shrill _brrrring_ , finally. He can already see Nakeem's huge bulk coming this way. At least he's not late.

Nnoitra glances back at Tesla. He could also probably go for killing something, exorcising the teeth-grinding tension of days upon days of being cooped up with these idiots. He likes killing monsters even more than he likes killing people some days. It's relaxing.

He'd prefer to go alone, probably, but nobody goes on supply runs alone - not when the whole lot of them need the shit they'll bring back. If it has to be someone it may as well be Tesla, which -

Huh.

He guesses that decides it then.

"Yeah," says Nnoitra.

"I am glad to hear it," Tesla says, looking away from Nnoitra's face finally, as though _now_ he's finally embarrassed. What a weird guy.

He moves to let Nnoitra down the ladder and then Nnoitra switches out with Nakeem without ever having to actually talk to him, which is ideal as far as Nnoitra is concerned.

It's another day before whatever rumour Tesla heard bubbles to the surface. It just gives Nnoitra time to think about it. He's never been on a date in his entire damn life, and it is both completely fitting and absolutely ridiculous that it takes the end of days for anyone to think asking him is a good idea.

Makes sense, though. There's a pretty small pool of candidates around here. Especially if you're looking for unattached ones, or if you're unwilling to share bed partners or get involved in... whatever the hell's going on in Grimmjow's giant room late at night. That lot's all sexually available, sure, but mentally... they have what Lumina would have called 'disordered attachment styles'. (Before Zommari caught her raiding his garden for new potatoes.)

Nnoitra uses the extra day to rationalise it all to himself. He's a lot more comfortable when he realises that it is not necessarily that he's a _good_ choice, but rather that he's an _available_ choice, and that Tesla might just expect him - rightly, after all - to be a choice who won't get weird or clingy or attached.

That all makes perfect sense to Nnoitra, and the idea relaxes him, so when Ulquiorra, with an expression like he's drinking hemlock (which is his default expression, Hemlock Face), says they're looking for people to make a supply run right into the middle of a city, he volunteers.

It's like buying someone a drink used to be, he figures. But with monsters. Monsters, murder, sex. That seems fine. He can work with that.

And then he actually shows up and Tesla looks at him from underneath his eyelashes and smiles wider than Nnoitra has ever seen him do, and he thinks: _huh. that's weird,_ and then, rapidly, with an awful clench of his guts and a weird jerky feeling in his chest, _maybe I misread this situation._

* * *

Cities are dangerous. They have poor sight lines, so any ranged fighters have to waste time climbing to good vantage points if they want to be effective, and climbing like that is dangerous to them all on its own. The structures are a mess - not enough time has passed for them to begin to fall down on their own, but they're dangerous to climb in some places, and heaps of them have been damaged by fire or amateur explosives. The roads are usually clogged with old barricades made of rubble and vehicles and bits of fencing and signage, and there are plenty of abandoned vehicles cluttering up the place.

And, of course, some of the cities around got bombed by the actual army. Mostly they try to avoid those ones. They're even less safe than the rest of them, and not strictly because of the monsters.

There are a lot of places to hide in a city. Especially for something without much concern for the conditions in which it lives. The debris hides such a multitude of sins.

Nnoitra's a little giddy just thinking about it, honestly.

But they still have to _get there_ which is the bit that Nnoitra's starting to worry about. Nothing has ever made Nnoitra like someone less than having to actually talk to them for any period of time, and he and Tesla are in for a three hour ride and a lengthy walk.

The trains don't actually run anymore, not with an organised system or on a schedule or anything like that. But with enough notice and effort they can get one carriage going all the way until it reaches the nearest obstruction on the line. In this case, that obstruction is another train - at some point it rammed into an abandoned lorry, and there's a glorious pile of scrap metal loaded up on the warped tracks. It's kind of impressive, if you've never seen it before.

Nnoitra has seen it before and he's not that easily impressed in general. It's the carriage ride he's dreading. Tesla doesn't seem like the kind of guy who talks a lot, or needs Nnoitra to talk back to him a lot - he seems pretty reserved, and only really speaks up when he has something to say, but -

What if he's weird when he's alone, Nnoitra wonders. He feels unsettled every time he remembers Tesla's smile when Nnoitra showed up this morning. Nnoitra's starting to wonder if he's doomed himself to three hours of chatter.

The train's branding has long been replaced by someone's painting of a giant robot with laser eyes and tank treads fighting what might be generously interpreted as a dragon, but which Nnoitra thinks of as an ugly blob with eyes and teeth. What might be a wing curls up over the roof. The inside is dirty - it doesn't get cleaned, because who would want to, and the plasticky coating on the seats is torn up, leaving bits of synthetic stuffing scattered throughout. The metal gives a tired creak when they climb on board.

He's thinking of ways to kill Tesla and blame the monsters before Verona has even finished sliding the huge metal carriage doors shut behind them with a shriek. He'll have to get through the supply run alone, but Nnoitra can do that.

He'll - he'll even be able to take his time killing Tesla, actually, he thinks suddenly.

There's a machete in Tesla's belt. For the monsters. He doesn't wear it around normally. Nnoitra would remember if he'd seen it before. He doesn't know what kind of repair it's in, but Tesla doesn't seem self conscious about wearing it.

Yeah. He could take his time killing Tesla. Might even be fun.

The train isn't _safe_ exactly, but they check the carriages every time before they leave, and as soon as it reaches its speed it'll stay there for hours - it's too fast for much of anything to catch up to them. If Nnoitra does want to kill Tesla, he has hours to make it good. He can even just -

Abruptly, he glances up.

Of course Szayel has cameras. Nnoitra swallows. If Tesla does something - starts something - or they get into a fight and he dies or... there are a lot of ways he could get away with killing Tesla, still. But overpowering him and holding him down and taking it all nice and slow like Nnoitra wants it is... Nnoitra'd get kicked out for that. If they knew it happened.

He couldn't cut a deal with Szayel either. It's not like Szayel _wouldn_ ' _t_ agree to something like that - like Nnoitra's, that man's moral stance is laying down - but of course he'd hold onto that kind of blackmail material _forever_ , and then Nnoitra would have to either do what Szayel wants, or kill him too, or...

If he goes that way, the bodies are going to start piling up in a way that'll make other people suspicious.

Better not to kill Tesla in front of the cameras at all. Which means he'll have to do it in the city, or at least close enough to the city that they'd worry about monster attacks. So he _will_ have to be fast. Which is a shame because Tesla is cute. But...

The train carriage starts moving with a lurch and the screech of protesting metal. Verona, outside, says something completely incoherent at a brainless yelp, but then he yells, "Szayelaporro!" and it sounds cheerful enough so probably nothing is wrong.

The noise of Szayel's assistants fades as they build speed, and then the carriage settles into its creaking, rocking rhythm, thundering along the old tracks.

They're alone and they're trapped alone together for the next three hours.

Nnoitra's heart is racing away in his chest.

He looks around the carriage, at the rusty stains and evidence of wild animals, at the streaked windows. Maybe he'll just... Tesla's not that big. He's not like Nakeem or Yammy or something. Nnoitra could definitely fit him through the window. Maybe it won't open anymore, but Nnoitra can just break it and toss him out and -

The carriage is silent.

He jerks his head away from the window and looks at Tesla.

Tesla blinks at Nnoitra, startled by the sudden movement. But before that, he was... looking at a map of Northway City.

Because that's the city they're heading for.

He's sitting down on one of the least gross of the old seats. He looks at Nnoitra for a second - a long, loooong second, like an endless one that he feels stretching forever between them, long and awful - and then his mouth twitches around the edges, like the world's tiniest smile, and he looks back to his map.

Nnoitra chews his lip. Then his thumb. Then he discovers a hangnail and gnaws that off instead.

The first thing Tesla says takes ten minutes to get to and all it turns out to be is, "Will we take this approach?"

Nnoitra feels the sigh come out of him, long and hot. He doesn't know what he's feeling but he's uncomfortable. _You can still toss him out of the carriage_ , he reminds himself. It settles his heart.

"Hey, Tesla," he says, and all his efforts to sound casual just make it come out sounding angry. But Tesla looks up at him, attentive and placid, so he keeps going because - because whatever. "You... when we get there, you're not going to get in my way."

He wants nothing more than to ignore whatever this uncomfortable feeling is that Tesla's forcing on him, and he won't be able to do that if Tesla's going to keep being there and _doing things_ while he's trying to distract himself. The monsters will distract Nnoitra. He enjoys killing things. He'd enjoy killing Tesla, probably, but -

"No," says Tesla. "I won't."

Nnoitra is well aware that Tesla is not actually doing anything.

He has done nothing but climb on the train and look at his map and _smile_ at Nnoitra. He's not doing anything.

Nnoitra doesn't like it. Tesla not doing anything means that if he tosses Tesla out of the speeding train carriage right now he really will look like a crazy person.

"Well," he says tensely, when Tesla's response permeates Nnoitra's foggy consciousness, "good."

Finally he looks at the map. It's on Tesla's lap and his knee and part of his thigh is sticking out from under the fall of the paper. He has good thighs. Nnoitra likes the swell of the muscle under his trousers.

"Looks fine," he says. He is lying. He hasn't even seen the picture on the map. Nnoitra has no idea where they're going.

Tesla smiles again. "Alright," he says serenely.

Fuck Tesla anyway.

* * *

The train ride is completely tolerable.

Nnoitra does not toss Tesla out the carriage window. Tesla seems at ease, even after three hours sitting in the rocking carriage as all the while Nnoitra winds himself up higher and higher and paces the aisle in tight loops like a frightened horse in a loosebox.

The train carriage stops, dependent on some mechanism installed by Szayel - one dreamed up by Verona, before... before. It whines and screeches as it comes to a halt. It is between platforms, about half a mile from the wreckage that obstructs the tracks. They don't exactly have a surplus of trains, so they are cautious.

The doors don't beep or light up as they once may have. Nnoitra wrenches them open impatiently and ignores the shriek of protesting metal. He drops to the gravel beside the tracks, looking out over the defunct line. No lights, no mechanical buzzes, no hum of electricity stirs out here: just grasses springing up between the sleepers, and, much too close, the shadows of the towering city skyline.

Tesla drops down behind him, map stuffed away in a side pocket of his pack, where it will take up minimal space among what supplies they bring back. The gravel crunches underfoot. He, too, pauses and glances at the towering buildings that begin almost at the edge of the train line.

He turns away and hauls the carriage doors closed. If all goes well they will take it back, too, and ideally it won't be infested by then.

Nnoitra lets him indicate their direction - he still hasn't paid any attention to the map, being as it remained in some way attached to Tesla for the whole ride - and then he lets his own nervous energy set the pace.

Tesla is of average height, which means he's a full foot shorter than Nnoitra (no matter how good his thighs are), and any pace that Nnoitra sets to bleed off his own excess energy is basically running from Telsa's much shorter point of view. He doesn't complain, and he keeps up with an awkward combination of rapid walking and occasional jogging.

Nnoitra mostly ignores him. Tesla says he won't get in the way: Nnoitra will hold him to it.

As soon as they get away from the carriage Nnoitra begins banging things and kicking up pieces of the ruined footpaths. The noises will attract attention.

Within ten minutes he can hear reciprocal sounds from within the quiet city. Doors and windows tinkle and shudder. Metal creaks. He tilts his head toward every noise. They're distant to begin with, but they are getting closer.

Tesla never once says anything about Nnoitra attracting attention with his clattering and banging. Either he doesn't care, or he's figured out that that's entirely the point.

Nnoitra loosens his sledgehammer and carries it slung over his shoulder instead. He may as well. He'll have need of it soon enough.

They move into the denser parts of the city. Parts of the footpath are cracked and in places it dips wildly, forming deceptive troughs and strange jagged peaks of concrete. All sorts of vehicles, from little scooters to huge trucks, litter the streets with their finishes in varying states of disrepair, each left under the sun and rain with no maintenance. Some have doors left open, sagging now. Others are all shut up, rusting quietly as they wait for someone to unlock them again.

As they go, Nnoitra idly catalogues the old brown streaks on their windows and the claw marks in their shells.

He can feel his heart rate rising. Every sound from their surroundings makes his nerves sing.

He can feel Tesla, too, winding up, higher and higher, more and more tense at Nnoitra's back. He can't tell if it's fear or anticipation for Tesla - no reason why it can't be both, though.

He hears him once, climb on top of the hood of a car - the brace of his foot on the front tyre, the clink-clank of his boot soles on the old metal. It's a higher vantage point, maybe so he can see further. Nnoitra glances over, but he can't read anything from Tesla's face, which is steady and impassive, if maybe a little tight around the edges.

At least he's probably not the type to freeze up if he gets scared, Nnoitra thinks critically.

If he is, he's dead. Nnoitra isn't in the habit of coming to anyone's rescue.

The buildings tower over them here, casting big long shadows. There are weeds that sway when the wind blows, signs on chains that creak, the soft _tick-tick-tick_ of expanding metal in the sunlight, stray bits of insulation tumbling across the ground, and...

 _Scrape_. A sound that doesn't quite belong.

Nnoitra almost misses it amid all the other things that attract the attention of his overzealous nervous system, but the flicker of motion from the first of the actual monsters has exactly the same kind of jerky movement they all do: slow, slow, _quick_. He twitches toward it as it scrambles in the shadowy space between buildings.

It is man-sized, for of course it was once a man, although it is warped and twisted around the hips and knees and that body will never walk like a bipedal animal again. Its skin is grey and soft, damp-looking. And it is bloated grotesquely around the middle, discoloured with the evidence of leaking gasses. It has a roughly human face, still, but - well. Lumina once said people will see faces in anything, if you let them. Its eyes are gone. The eyes, for some reason, never last long.

Despite the warped bodies and ugly bloating, the monsters are fast.

"Another," says Tesla flatly. He sounds just as steady as he ever does, which is a good sign.

Nnoitra grunts and follows his gaze to the cars on the other side of the road. He sees it too, there, empty eye sockets turned toward them from where the monster lurks in the shadow of a brightly-painted taxi. He can see it when it lifts its face and scents the air.

He reaches out and thumps one hand into the hood of the nearest car with a huge **BANG**. Tesla twitches. Both monsters he can now see turn toward them, zeroing in on the sound.

Nnoitra is half-tempted to coo at it like he's calling a cat in for dinner, so it can follow the sound of his voice. But there will be plenty of them if he's patient. They follow the smell of anything they think might bleed.

He keeps walking. Tesla's boots thump when he drops back down from the car.

It takes the monsters a while to work up to attacking. At first they just keep pace, scrambling alongside and around them in a circle with an ever-diminishing circumference. Without eyes they have to rely on their other senses, and that probably keeps them from committing too early.

But the monsters do creep closer eventually, sniffing with increasing excitement. Nnoitra licks his lips. Their excitement communicates itself to him, too, and the closer they come the more he feels his body heating with heady anticipation.

"That's the pharmacy he wants," Tesla says, pointing at the building with the point of his machete.

 _Oh_ , Nnoitra thinks, following the straight line of his arm to its edge. When did he pull that thing out? It looks sharp, nicked on the sides, maybe, but carefully maintained along the edge.

Right, right, he thinks then, they're on a supply run, not just out here for the fun of it. Nnoitra licks his teeth.

"Go on, then," he purrs, without drawing his eye away from the edge of the big knife. He sort of wants to see it in action - but he also does not want to share. Who's he even kidding? Nnoitra never pays much attention to anyone else once they start to attack. "You get the drugs -" Szayel _always_ wants drugs, and obviously that's a pharmacy, so it seems like a fair guess, "-I'll keep them all nice and busy for you."

Tesla glances around at the slowly circling monsters, shuffling and sniffing. They're close enough that Nnoitra can smell them now, that telltale reek of sweet organic decay that slaps him when the wind is right.

Tesla looks back at Nnoitra.

For a long second Nnoitra is _sure_ he's gonna be a real killjoy about this, and it'll be just like a run with Ulquiorra Hemlock Face Fuckin' Cifer, all _we must stick together_ and _we cannot risk it because we require these resources_ and _if we separate the likelihood of injury, death or infection rises substantially._

Tesla watches him steadily, but he doesn't say anything for a second.

"What," Nnoitra barks, sending one of the encroaching monsters skittering away and then closer still with the snap of his voice. "You think I need your help with these fuckers?"

There's a pause.

"No," says Tesla, speculatively, which - _good_ , absolutely fucking _correct_ , that is the only right answer and Nnoitra is glad they both know it.

But he isn't quite satisfied, and he bares his teeth. "What?"

Tesla's mouth twists. He drops his head, and finally he says, "I'll be ten minutes." And then he's gone, darting quickly and silently across the street.

Nnoitra exhales through his nose.

The monsters' heads turn to follow Tesla in confusion. He's quiet - quieter than Nnoitra, certainly - but they can still smell him, of course, and now the scents they've been following are split up and the poor stupid things are all confused.

Nnoitra slams the head of his sledgehammer into the post of a streetlamp and brings it down with an enormous metallic _clang_. It echoes down the street and rapidly recaptures the attention of all the monsters: their eyeless faces immediately swivel back to Nnoitra.

The one nearest him takes a step closer, sniffing, long claws scraping.

"Good girl," he coos at her, twirling the sledgehammer in his hand by its handle.

A shudder runs through the monster, and it communicates itself to the others. They all do it, moving in concert with a neck-ruffling, hair-raising sigh.

This is it.

Ten minutes, Nnoitra thinks critically. Sweet.

They're fast, despite their fucked up joints and ugly shapes. The first crosses the distance to Nnoitra in under two seconds, and its snarl is like a signal to the rest - suddenly the air is thick with the charnel-house reek of their bloated bodies, with the snap and growl of their ruined voices.

Nnoitra swings overhead and the head of his sledgehammer smashes into the skull of the first comer, an impact that spits shards of bone and grey matter across the cracked concrete.

"Come on!" he roars into the snapping snarling screaming of them.

The claws of one rip into his boot - he feels the pressure but no pain - and the heaves on his weapon. His arms burn as he changes trajectory mid-swing. Another vile-smelling splatter smacks the street.

The concrete cracks again under the force of his blows and he gives another ecstatic whoop.

From then Nnoitra is lost to it. Their claws rip into his arms and legs, but nothing puts him down for long, and his every blow sends the old flesh sloughing away, reeking as it flies through the air. His whole body burns and he finally feels - nothing. Not sick, not bored, not angry, not nervous or afraid or seething with hate. He is, briefly, violence in human shape. Nothing can put him down. Nothing an stop him. He welcomes the attempt. _Try it. Just fucking try it._

If something could kill Nnoitra now, he'd go down willingly.

It can't.

He's heaving by the end of it. 'The end of it' comes, of course, when there's nothing left to kill.

He is wet with sweat, slick and steaming in the cool air, and there's no more scraping and snapping, no more ruined voices.

Nnoitra's limbs are shaking. His core muscles are shaking too, because a sledgehammer is a full-body kind of weapon. He sniffs - his eye is streaming, stung with salty sweat, and his sinuses are doing something weird in response. His hair is stringy and stuck to him. He props his weapon on one shoulder, ignoring the wet _slap_ as a last bit of - something - slips off the head and smacks the concrete below.

He's ruined another pair of boots, but there'll be some in this stupid city somewhere. They're on a supply run so...

They...

"Tesla," he says, remembering.

His voice sounds strange. Has he been yelling?

"Ah, I'm here," says Tesla, and Nnoitra spins.

Tesla is indeed there, sitting on the roof of an old van. His bag is half-full, but he does not look as though he's been exerting himself recently.

It has, Nnoitra thinks distantly, probably been more than ten minutes.

Tesla watches him steadily for a moment, and then his mouth curves again, and cheerfully he says, "You look like you're having fun."

Tesla does not seem even slightly put off by the gore and debris, or by the violence of Nnoitra's fight. On the contrary, when Nnoitra's breath slows, and the heaving of his ribs gentles, he can see where Tesla's face is flushed high across his cheekbones, where his eyes have darkened because they've become mostly pupil in watching him.

Nnoitra's brain stalls.

"...Yeah," he says blankly.

Is it good that Tesla is not upset by the orgiastic slaughter? Is that what Nnoitra wants from him? Or is he hoping Tesla will get uncomfortable and flee at the first opportunity? Is he still looking for a chance to kill him? He doesn't know.

Tesla looks at Nnoitra with a surprising and uncomfortable softness in his face. It is easy to think that he is, himself, just as soft and vulnerable and weak as that expression. Nnoitra's eye flicks down to his hands, though, and finds them smudged darkly with the blood of monsters. The edge of Tesla's machete is black.

He's still looking at Nnoitra.

"What are you staring at?"

Tesla blinks slowly. "There's blood on your chin, Nnoitra," he says.

Nnoitra shudders at the sound of his name and he is not quite sure why. He swipes a hand over his chin and it does come back bloody - properly bloody, fresh and red. It's his. As soon as he sees it, his mouth hurts. He bit himself in the fight, or got hit, or something.

He scoffs, spits out a mouthful of blood and saliva onto the broken cement, and turns away from Tesla and his weird face and his watchful eyes.

"Hurry up," he tells him, clenching his jaw.

Tesla descends from his perch with a clatter of boots on metal. "Supermarket next?"

"Yeah," says Nnoitra. He thinks he'd probably say 'yeah' to just about anything right now.

The city is quieter now. Other people who undertake supply runs complain of being stalked by monsters the whole way, of trying to creep past their hunched blind bodies and stealthily collect goods with their hearts trembling at every cautious step.

They are clearly doing something wrong, because Nnoitra has never once had this problem. He makes as much racket as he can, banging on things and kicking up rubble with his boots. He provokes several additional attacks this way, and meets each one with the same enthusiasm as the first.

Tesla is fast with his machete.

Nnoitra gets a sadistic joy in proving himself against the bodies of his enemies - and friends, and random strangers sometimes, if he's honest - but Tesla fights like an automaton.

It's as if, each time a new group of monsters works up to the decision to attack, something trips a trigger in his fluffy little head and lines of code are suddenly executed, lined up one after another after another. He switches from paying unsettling but largely placid attention to Nnoitra to sudden violence in about zero-point-three seconds. His attacks aren't killing ones, much of the time, but it is easy to disable monsters with a large and sufficiently sharp knife. He has the knack for shearing through limbs and taking out joints.

Each time the sudden descent of silence leaves him blinking. And then he pulls out a rag, wipes indifferently at the slippery mess on his hands and on the hilt of his big knife, and turns his eyes back on Nnoitra.

Since they are in the city for Szayel's purposes anyway, they've been given a bunch of other things to get. It represents little greater risk to collect additional supplies from other, nearby locations. A grocery chain is next on their list of attractions.

It's dark inside and it smells bad. The fresh food rotted away a long time ago and sits in the form of black, foul-smelling sludge in its shelves. In places, new things are starting to grow, but Nnoitra doubts those are edible. The fridges and freezers have been dark for years and they're equally rank.

Canned and dry goods take a lot longer to go bad, though, and basically anything candied or salted is fair game. Tesla digs out a giant tub of pure honey which will probably cause a riot when they bring it back. Some of this shit will get rationed, and then anyone who takes more than his share will risk ending up... Veronaed, so to speak. As he reminds them often, Szayel is always looking for new assistants.

Being part of the supply team has a couple of perks other than whacking monsters with a sledgehammer, though, so Nnoitra can shove some stuff in his own pockets for himself, and he also gets to enforce his own preferences. He examines a can of sweet corn kernels, makes a face and casually lobs it away, sending it smashing into a sagging cardboard cut out of a grinning guy holding a recipe book, which skids across the scuffed linoleum and smacks into a discarded shopping trolley. The racket pleases him.

If other people want disgusting canned disappointment then they can volunteer to come get it, can't they?

The highlight of the supermarket is that there's one stray monster skulking around the aisles. Nnoitra gets to ram into it with a shopping trolley at a sprint, lifting himself up to ride the wheel guards at the last second and shrieking at the top of his lungs. Distantly, he is aware of Tesla sticking his head out of an aisle to watch.

They crash into a long-expired display of organic pasta sauces and tumble down in a cacophony of shattered glass and snarling and the wet _sloorp_ of old sauce. Nnoitra cackles and bashes the thing's head in one-handed. Its black blood just makes the place smell even worse.

When he gets back to his feet he has sauce all down one side and a cut from the broken glass oozing on his left hand. Tesla is still right there, having followed quietly to keep watching. Now he has an expression of indulgent pleasure, like nothing could please him more than to be exactly where he is now.

Since Tesla is currently in the middle of a dim, reeking store watching as a grown man covered in half rotten tomato sauces cheerfully butchers monsters, Nnoitra calls bullshit.

"Are you fucking broken or something?" he wonders aloud, flicking a clump of slimy tomato from his hip.

Tesla frowns. "Broken?"

"Yeah," Nnoitra nods, squinting at him. He props his sledgehammer over one shoulder and leans back on his hip. His limbs are long, and the head of the hammer smacks into a shelf and makes it wobble dangerously. "Like. What's wrong with you?"

Tesla looks like he's not completely prepared for this line of questioning, which is dumb because it's a pretty relevant one from where Nnoitra's standing.

"Nothing?" Tesla tries, but he doesn't sound very sure.

Nnoitra can feel irritation rising up through his guts and spreading out to all his muscles again. He's running out of patience for whatever Tesla's doing here. He doesn't have a lot of patience to start with, but a bit of killing usually extends his fuse. Not now.

"Why'd you wanna come out here?" he tries instead. "Dead monsters get you off or what?"

Tesla still looks blank, but now also increasingly uncomfortable. "I thought you'd like it."

And half the problem is that Nnoitra _does_ like it. This is great. He's a suspicious person by nature, and that is the _worst_. "What's that to you?" he demands.

Tesla licks his lips. Nnoitra watches like his eye is magnetically drawn to the slick slide of his tongue.

"I like to watch you," Tesla says, glancing over Nnoitra's shoulder instead of looking him in the face. "I like to watch you enjoy yourself."

This is either the biggest crock of shit Nnoitra has ever encountered, or it's staggeringly, upsettingly honest. He can't decide which. Bullshit makes him less uncomfortable, but from what he knows of Tesla's actual personality, honesty seems more likely.

Nnoitra's fingers twist on the haft of his hammer. He shifts on his feet. He would like to not be in this situation right now.

He could just - swing.

He could just fucking swing. Tesla's fast, but he's not _that_ fast. The head of his sledgehammer would meet Tesla's skull, and the sledgehammer would win that fight easily. It'd shatter, and weird shit would happen to his eyes for half a second, and his face would - it'd basically pulp under the impact. Nnoitra's seen that. He's done that before.

That would definitely alleviate his discomfort.

Also, Tesla would stop fucking _looking at him_ like this.

Why did Nnoitra agree to come out here today?

He grinds his teeth, staring at the freckles under Tesla's eyes. _Fuck_. "You're a fucking idiot," he grates out, and then he hitches his bag higher pon his shoulder and stalks away.

Tesla follows. Of course he does. He looks concerned, but largely unaffected.

They go to a bookshop and a cellar and stop, briefly, to get Nnoitra three new pairs of boots, from the locked back room of a ransacked shoe store. They won't fit in his supply bag, because it has actual supplies in it, so Nnoitra carries them in a plastic bag with a store logo like he actually bought them. This is nostalgic and weird.

He still has not figured Tesla out.

They survive the supply run - which Nnoitra doesn't think was really in question - and Tesla survives Nnoitra for the duration of the supply run - which was of much lower certainty.

The pair hauls their heavy bags back onto the train carriage. Nnoitra evicts with brutal efficiency the solitary monster that has taken up residence during their absence and kicks its remains out the door. Tesla heads around the outside, fires up and triggers whatever arcane mechanism Szayel has provided to get the carriage rolling again in its opposite direction.

There's the smell of burnt hair and a few sparks, and Tesla has to jog to catch the doorway as the train begins to roll. Nnoitra watches his face contort as he catches the ledge and vaults up to sprawl on the carriage floor. He does not offer to help.

The doors won't close properly against the pressure of the train's momentum, so they leave it open, air whistling and rushing past as the train builds speed. Outside, Nnoitra sees two monsters lift their skulls at the sound of their passing and thinks, annoyed: _missed a couple._

He contemplates tossing Tesla out the open door just for the hell of it, but finds the thought curiously unexciting.

He licks his teeth and settles in to lean back against the vibrating carriage wall. He feels the dull weakness of tired muscles in his shoulders and his belly, worn out from the fighting.

"What was your plan with this?" Nnoitra wonders aloud. It has been, in the scheme of things, not a bad day. And Tesla's unsettling and completely unfathomable, but Nnoitra doesn't hate him even though he's spent most of the day alone with him.

"There was no plan," Tesla says. He doesn't sound tired, although he must be. Even aside from the rigours of the day, Nnoitra keeps demanding exactly the same information from him in an astonishing variety of ways and with differing degrees of hostility. "I thought you'd enjoy it."

When Nnoitra cracks his eye back open he's between Nnoitra and the open door. He makes a sharp silhouette when the sky is so bright and clear outside.

Nnoitra watches him clean off his hands and wrists - and forearms, eventually, and then the smear on the side of his jaw.

Tesla is cute. And stupid. It's hard for Nnoitra to respect someone who actually likes him.

And yet...

"I did." It feels like a big admission. Luckily, Tesla is right between Nnoitra and the door so plan B, where he boots Tesla out the carriage, is still completely available to him for another two hours and forty nine minutes.

But all Tesla says in response is a soft, even: "I'm glad."

So ...that could be worse.

* * *

That's the last one I actually completed for nnoites week 2018 (I did five out of seven. Anything not in FFN is on AO3 because it'll be in violation of FFN'S terms, as always). If you liked something, let me know! :)


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